Mora reacted before Sylver could say something, and with the ease of a puppet being moved around by a professional, a string wrapped itself around Faust’s torso and lifted him onto Mora’s back. Sylver let go of the reins he had been holding, and they disappeared as Mora unraveled them.

Off in the distance, a person was lying in the middle of the road. According to the shades, he was alive, and was breathing, but appeared to be asleep.

“Stay with Mora, she’ll take care of you. You might need to run, I can’t fight while protecting you,” Sylver explained, as he adjusted his stance, and Mora did the same.

Her legs split down the middle and a second pair appeared, except one, for a total of 7 legs. Her hooves moved up a little and revealed the shiny tips of claws sticking out from beneath the hollow hooves.

Even if Faust’s body was cleaved into two, as long as he wasn’t exorcized, Sylver could still revive him. It would just take a while, and he doubted he would be able to use his Ki if that happened. Sylver felt Ria gently straighten herself out within the back area of his robe, but she was careful not to stick out of it just yet.

Sylver walked slowly, and calmly, as Spring and the shades scouted the surroundings for any potential ambush, but aside from the man sleeping in the middle of the street, there wasn’t anyone around. It didn’t mean this wasn’t an ambush, it only meant that they were good enough to hide from Sylver.

Or that they had a teleportation mage with them.

Sylver repeatedly used [Arcane Insight] as he approached the man.

[Human – Leather Smith – 19]

[HP: 91 – 14%]

[MP: 10 – 100%]

[Stamina: 2 – 1%]

[Corpse – Inferior]

[Soul – Petty]

This isn’t the best place for an ambush. Sylver thought as he continued to walk towards the man.

There had been many great spots earlier, large boulders to hide behind, even dips in the road that would be easy to surround, this was a flat open field, Sylver had enough room to even summon Will to fly away.

But then Sylver was 20 steps away from the man.

Then he was 10 steps away. He smelled something sour.

Finally, he stopped when he was within arms reach of the seemingly unconscious man. Sylver kept all of his daggers near his back, as he prepared for what may come, as he crouched and pressed two fingers to the base of the man’s neck.

Sylver’s eyes opened wide, as he pulled his fingers away and promptly ignited a blue flame to cleanse them. He stayed crouched as he covered his hand in a thin layer of [Necrotic Mutilation] and very gently opened one of the man’s eyes.

The man’s eyeball was moving around sporadically and was so bloodshot that there was almost more red than white. As Sylver let go of his eyelid, it opened and closed several times, before it finally closed all the way. Sylver used the same [Necrotic Mutilation] gloved hand to pick the man’s fist up, and as he had suspected, saw that it was almost shaking from how hard he was forcing it closed.

The man’s skin was pale and had a sheen of glossy sweat where Sylver could see it. His armpits were a very dark yellow, and his nails had a telltale white edge.

Sylver was very careful as he detached the glove from his hand, made it float a short distance away from him before he made it churn itself, and then ignited it just to be safe.

He continued staring at the man, even as he stood up from his crouch, and rubbed his chin.

Sylver mentally nudged Mora to come closer but made her stop when she was 20 steps away. He turned around and faced the ready-to-fight Faust.

“What is it?” Faust asked, as Sylver walked around the man, and saw that one of his pockets had been turned inside out. His left hand’s finger had a bad cut on it, likely from someone ripping a ring off it.

“Night Fever… It shouldn’t be here…” Sylver half answered, half mumbled.

“Night Fever… Like, the song?” Faust asked, as Sylver absent-mindedly shook his head.

“It’s a curse. It’s usually transmitted when two people sleep in the same room. The infected then sleep for 1 day, then 2 days, then 3 days, and so on… Problem is, they don’t actually “sleep,” the body doesn’t rest… And if untreated, it ends with the heart giving out…” Sylver explained as he made another circle around the sleeping man.

Sylver got onto his knees and lowered his head towards the man’s face, with his ear aimed towards his mouth. He waited for a few seconds and silently listened to him breathe. He once again coated his hand in [Necrotic Mutilation] and placed his open palm on top of the man’s slick with sweat chest.

“Something is off here… It’s too severe…” Sylver didn’t even think about it, as a scalpel appeared in his hand, but a very muffled gasp from Ria reminded him he wasn’t alone.

“I’m just going to cut his nails,” Sylver explained, as the liquid metal woman did her equivalent of a nod.

He did as he said, and very gently sliced off the white tips of the man’s fingernails, and placed them into a tightly sealed glass flask. Sylver rattled them around inside the glass tube as he held them up to the sunlight. It was subtle, but they became just a tad darker.

He placed his palm onto the man’s chest again, and after a few seconds of inspection, found something curious. Sylver was careful as he turned the man onto his stomach, and lifted the back of his shirt.

On his back, there were multiple scratches that all started at the base of his spine and moved away from it, and slightly downwards. Sylver stared at the scratches and then proceeded to pick one of the scabs off with the tip of his scalpel and put it into a flask.

Faust had an unreadable look on his face, as Sylver floated all the pieces that touched the man, and turned them into ash.

“Can you help him?” Ria asked.

Sylver shook his head.

“Not at this stage… He might wake up one more time, but his heart isn’t going to last for more than a day or so… He’s been robbed, and going by the footprints he was heading that way…” Sylver explained and did his best to imply there wasn’t any point asking what Ria was about to ask.

“I would like it if we took him with us. It will give you time to inspect and learn about the curse,” Ria explained, and Sylver’s mood brightened up at such a well-worded request.

“I already have all I need to learn about the curse,” Sylver answered as he shook the small sealed flask. “If we move him, it might cause it to spread. And while I’m safe, Faust could be vulnerable. Mora should be fine, but it would be an unnecessary risk for a man who’s going to die in less than a day,” Sylver added.

There was a bitter silence for a few seconds, as Sylver pulled the man’s shirt back into place, and turned him over so he was laying on his back. Just how he found him.

“So we are just leaving him here to die,” Ria said.

“If we take him with us, there’s a chance he will spread it to a caravan. If he isn’t inside a closed room, the curse is rather contagious. If a caravan with a sleeping person inside were to pass us, they would get cursed. Children are the most vulnerable to this. An adult might be able to tolerate this for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, but for a child, it could be fatal within the first 4 days. The smart thing to do would be to kill him, and burn his corpse,” Sylver explained, even as Mora began to walk around him and the sleeping man.

Sylver readjusted his daggers as he waited, and spoke up as Ria remained silent.

“I can move him away from the road, and put him in a basic earth coffin. It should keep monsters away, and assuming his heart doesn’t explode while he’s asleep and he wakes up, he will be able to get out and go wherever it is he was trying to go,” Sylver offered, even as the earth underneath the man already started moving.

“Thank you,” Ria said quietly, as Sylver looked around for a good spot.

***

“Is there a cure?” Ria asked as Sylver put the flask with the fingernails away.

“I don’t know,” Sylver answered, and Ria almost knocked the tip of her staff against the back of his head as she tried to adjust the position of her face.

“How long will it take for you to find a cure?” Ria asked, as Sylver scratched his chin and placed his hand back onto Mora’s reins.

“The main problem with that is that this curse isn’t natural, someone made it. Someone who seems to know what they’re doing,” Sylver explained, as one of the suns reached the edge of the horizon and was about to touch it.

“What do you mean someone made it?” Faust asked as Sylver sent Spring ahead to check if they were close.

“I mean the structure is too stable to be a natural curse. Someone made it. And going by the lack of exterior mutations, quite recently too. I wouldn’t say this curse is older than 6 months, 9 months at the most,” Sylver said, as Spring returned with very good news.

“So how do we stop it?” Ria asked, and Sylver tried to think of a good way of wording this delicately.

“We don’t. I’m fairly certain Arda is going to go to war with these people in the future. I also highly doubt someone would go through the trouble of creating a curse that mimics Night Fever just for kicks. We are here to find and rescue Edmund… And find Faust a wife, but I’m not going to be much help in that regard,” Sylver explained, as Ria shifted the position of the staff again, and once again nearly hit his head.

“Wouldn’t you want to find a cure in case Faust or Edmund catches it?” Ria asked, and Sylver had to remind himself that she wasn’t fully aware of who he was.

“I can cure it. But it will take a lot of time, and effort, not to mention a solid curse like this likely has measures in place for someone attempting to disarm it. Which carries risk, a risk that I am willing to accept for Faust, and Edmund, but not for strangers,” Sylver explained and knew exactly what Ria was about to say before she even finished speaking.

“Can’t you-”

“I can’t bottle up the cure. It’s one thing to carve a piece of wood using your own two hands, and completely different to craft a machine to do it for you. If I really wanted to, I could, but the time required for me to do that ranges from months to years, all to save people my city’s army will eventually be fighting with,” Sylver said.

“You keep speaking about a war, do you know something?” Faust asked.

“No, but I know that you don’t become an empire by leaving everyone alone,” Sylver said, as he gently nudged Ria into her full staff form, and had Mora make herself look a bit more presentable.

A mountain this tall should have been visible hours ago, but as was usual with Eira’s geography, there was some kind of trick here. The mountain was shaped like a giant cone, with 5 distinct peaks that gave it an overall appearance of a stone crown.

While it was very faint, Sylver was fairly certain he could see a shimmering emanating from the middle of the crown-shaped mountain, and correctly guessed that that was the source of the barrier surrounding the region.

During the walk, Sylver stopped them and with a tap of his foot created a perfectly flat patch of earth. He laid down the map they had been given, used a compass to align it, and was beyond careful as he placed the device used to track Edmund down near the map.

Sylver felt sick in his nonexistent stomach as he prepared himself to use up one of his only four hints to find Edmund. If it pointed anywhere other than the Schlagen mountains, Sylver would be fucked. The map was good, but the compass wasn’t perfect.

Ria saved him from having the closest thing he could have to a panic attack, by telling him her internal compass is as close to perfect as anything that used magnets could be.

Once she saw the direction the needle tracking Edmund pointed, she would record it and could tell Sylver which direction it had been pointing no matter how much they turned around in the future. Ria even had an internal map she had been filling up as they moved, although it was a little messed up due to them teleporting.

Sylver tapped the device with the tip of his finger and then metaphorically held his breath as it slowly began to light up. The needle spun three times, and each time Sylver thought he would suffer a heart attack, but eventually, it pointed towards the Schlagen mountains and a little to the left.

“I got it,” Ria reassured him, even as Sylver made his own notes on his map, and did his best to sear the image and direction into his memory.

Edmund was somewhere in that direction.

All that was left was to find him.

***

The duo and the horse arrived at the gates, and Sylver had to suppress a smile. Which wasn’t that hard, because Ria’s pity for the two guards ruined the faint amount of joy Sylver felt at being handed this advantage.

They were swaying on their feet, the swords at their side were lopsided, they were even blinking so slowly that Sylver was sure he had ample time to run up to them and kill them. They weren’t getting enough sleep.

“What... who are you? State your business…” the guard on the left mumbled out.

In answer, Sylver felt as if someone took a piece of sandstone, heated it, and then proceeded to rub it against his face. He had to increase the amount of mana surrounding him as Faust just stared at the two guards.

They bowed low enough that Sylver was surprised that their helmets stayed on their heads. They were thin, and seemed to be made out of dark redwood, held together in a scale-like pattern using white string. The gates looked to be made out of the same wooden material, and only the very top was slanted and had dark red stone tiles.

The wall the gates were built into was quite low, but it was just for show, the real wall was the enormous bubble covering the entire region.

With Faust glaring at the two bowed men, he, Sylver, and Mora passed without anyone searching them, questioning them, or trying to stop them. Faust maintained his painfully intense aura, up until he felt they were far enough away.

Almost immediately his posture slouched, and he fell and landed on one knee. Sylver managed to grab him by the back of the collar, and with Mora’s help, lifted him into her saddle. Sylver placed her reins into his hand and pretended to lead her.

“We’re going the wrong direction,” Ria said quietly into Sylver’s ear.

“We need to meet with one of Lola’s contacts first. Fobur Plateforged. Apparently, Salgok knew him from before, and Lola helped him out with something,” Sylver whispered back, as Faust nearly fell off Mora’s back, and she very gently wrapped his limbs with her string and puppeteered his body to sit upright.

Sylver squinted his eyes as he looked upward and watched the clouds in the sky swirling around in a slightly weird pattern. The air had a taste that didn’t sit right with Sylver.

“We need to find Ed quickly and get out. There’s something going on in this place, and I don’t like it,” Sylver whispered to Ria, Mora, and a barely conscious Faust.